1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates, in general, to the field of data collection and control and more particularly to a method and apparatus for graphically collecting and managing data using a graphics form.
2. Description of the Related Art
Collection of various types of data is a problem familiar to persons marketing or distributing products. Typically the delivery personnel assigned to distribution routes inspect inventory distributed across the various retail locations. During a stop at a specific retail location the delivery person often needs to accomplish several tasks. One task is the counting and tallying of goods at the retail location. A second task is the verification of prices on the inventory. Quite often, marketing promotions, promotional sales, product shelf life and other market conditions require the changing of pricing on the inventory at a retail location. For locations where there are many different package configurations -styles, sizes and containers -for a family of products the field inventory is even more difficult. It is easy for the delivery personnel to make inventory mistakes when tallying a variety of product families. It would be understandable, for example, to mistake inadvertently "family size" items on a shelf adjacent to "king size" items.
In the beverage industry, the number and styles of packing configurations can be large. For example, the Budweiser family of beers, produced by single producer Anheuser-Busch, is available in numerous packing configurations. Budweiser is generally available in different container types, i.e., both bottles and cans, available in different container sizes, e.g., 12 ounces, quarts, 32 ounces, 64 ounces, and available in different packaging groupings, i.e., six-packs, twelve-packs, twenty-four-packs or cases. Many times the price change effects only one of the packing types. Returning to the beer example, the price on twelve-packs may be reduced while the prices for other sizes remain the same. Therefore, the difficulty spent tallying and tracking pricing for a variety of packing styles can be great.
Another difficulty for delivery personnel is having to match the correct packing style with the corresponding numeric or symbolic codes. These numeric or symbolic codes are often printed on specific inventory forms, data sheets, spreadsheet formats or displayed on hand-held terminals with the product description listed adjacent to the inventory level in an abbreviated format. In the Budweiser example, the abbreviation might read "Bud 6 pack cans." Because the packing configurations are sometimes easily confused, even with the abbreviated description, the tallying of product data is conducive to errors.
Another difficulty for delivery personnel is the maximization of retail shelf space at specific retail locations. It is common for many retail locations to limit the available shelf space dedicated to the distributor's product. Often the delivery personnel needs to rearrange items in the defined area because of promotional sales or the introduction of new packing configurations. The delivery personnel will manually move inventory around on the shelves to accomplish the desired re-shelving without being certain that all the items will fit in a desired configuration. In the case of beer, if the defined area or more correctly the allotted space is a refrigerated display cabinet, the number of packing configurations, such as a six pack 12 ounce can configuration, that can fit on a shelf area may not be known without trial and error. This can be tedious and time-consuming and may not enable the distributor to maximize the use of shelf area.
Still, another difficulty arises when the distributors hire personnel to stock and inventory the items on a route. The time to train the personnel to be familiar with lists of products from a particular manufacturer, all the packing styles offered by the manufacturer, understanding the shelf rotation for product freshness, and the specific configurations at each retail location can be lengthy. In addition, the delivery personnel are usually required to record the current inventory levels for a variety of packing configurations. This creates the high likelihood of transcription errors when the delivery personnel is required to write down inventory information on a ledger or required to enter information with a hand-held electronic computer. Delivery personnel relying on lists of product packaging styles often lead to selection and input mistakes. As result, the time invested by distributor to train personnel can be great.
The costs for product data collection and management and inventory control can be great given the time spent, the associated cost of paying personnel to collect relevant data, and the difficulty with tracking many packing configurations for a given family of products. Therefore, there exists a need for a method and apparatus to provide a graphics data form.